All Security & Communication Articles, Interviews, Stories & Videos

Parks Associates: New research from Parks Associates finds smart home solutions that coordinate safety and home/away event scenarios could help a device manufacturer create cross-platform brand loyalty similar to Apple's dominance in CE device ecosystems. The IoT research firm finds U.S. consumers are more likely to own multiple CE products from Apple than from any other CE brand, with loyalty based largely around its mobile platforms. The emerging smart home markets do not have a dominant cross-platform player yet and represent an opportunity to establish a new population of brand loyalists.
"Apple has built a strong base of brand loyalists—82% of Mac users who purchased a smartphone chose an iPhone. By comparison, only 38% of non-Mac users who bought a smartphone chose an iPhone," said Brett Sappington, Senior Research Director, Parks Associates. "But cross-platform loyalty is difficult to achieve. Beyond Apple, ecosystem-based thinking among U.S. consumers is not natural; manufacturers must bridge this gap through product development and marketing that emphasize brand-specific benefits in use cases that apply across computing, mobile, and entertainment platforms. Cont'd...

Janet Thomson for Curbed: When we talk about home tech, we’re often focused on products from technology juggernauts or new startups, but home security systems, the predecessors to today’s smart home ecosystems, have been used for decades (the first system was invented in 1969 by Marie Van Brittan Brown, and it featured a closed-circuit television system, a remote controlled door, and two-way communication).

Today there are literally thousands of options on the market, ranging from DIY kits to hardwired systems built into your home. How to choose? We went to the home security experts to understand the differences between systems and key features you should consider before installing. Cont'd...

Brian Benchoff for Hackaday: The Internet of Things is a horrific waste of time, even though no one knows exactly what it is. What would make it better? Classic Commodore gear, of course. Now you can run your smart home with a Commodore 64 and Commodore Home, the newest smart home framework from [retro.moe].

Commodore Home comes with the standard smart home features you would expect. The home lighting solution is a dot matrix printer, a few gears, and string tied to the light switch. Activate the printer, and the lights turn on and off. Brilliant. Multiple light switches can be controlled by daisy chaining printers.

Security is important in the smart home, and while the intruder alarm isn’t completely functional, future versions of Commodore Home will dial a modem, log into a BBS, and leave a message whenever an authorized person enters your home. Cont'd...

Ry Crist for CNet: Less than a month ago, hackers took control of an ocean of unsecured connected home devices, then essentially crashed the entire internet by using them to flood the web's largest internet management company with bogus traffic. Now, the makers of smart gadgets that communicate using Z-Wave are ratcheting up their security standards to help reassure consumers that their products don't come with glaring vulnerabilities.

"No one can afford to sit on their hands and wait," says Mitchell Klein, executive director of the Z-Wave Alliance. "Consumers deserve IoT devices in their home to have the strongest levels of security possible. IoT smart home technologies that don't act will be left behind."

The new standards are called the "Security 2" framework, or S2 for short. Aside from shoring up encryption standards for transmissions between sensors, cameras, and thermostats that broadcast using Z-Wave, S2 also mandates new pairing procedures for each device -- namely, unique PIN or QR codes on the devices themselves. Cont'd...

Indiana University Bloomington: As part of a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Indiana University has received over $670,000 to establish "HomeSHARE," the first networked system of smart homes designed to advance research on older adults.

The funds from the NSF's Computing Research Infrastructure Program will support the installation of high-tech sensors and other equipment in the homes of 15 elderly volunteers throughout the city of Bloomington. The project is an effort to improve the quality of life of elders through the unobtrusive collection of high-quality research data.

"As far as we're aware, this is the first large-scale research infrastructure project focused on smart homes," said Kay Connelly, an associate professor in the IU School of Informatics and Computing, who is the leader on the grant. "Typically, research infrastructure awards help maintain complex systems like supercomputers, or the purchase of advanced equipment. In this case, we’re looking to generate research data from people who enroll in a long-term study." Cont'd...

Mathew J. Schwartz for BankInfoSecurity: As if the internet of things didn't seem secure enough, now we have to worry about apps on our smartphones posing a risk too.

That's just one of the takeaways from the discovery of two zero-day vulnerabilities and one hardware-bypass flaw - now patched - in Belkin's WeMo line of home automation products. The flaws, and how to exploit them, were demonstrated Nov. 4 at Black Hat Europe by two researchers from endpoint security software firm Invincea, in a presentation titled: Breaking Bhad: Abusing Belkin Home Automation Devices.

Belkin bills its WeMo apps as being "designed to address simple automation needs without the hassle or expense of whole home automation." Compatible products include everything from "smart" LED light bulbs, power switches and baby video monitors to coffeemakers, slow cookers and heating controls. In November 2015, Belkin reported that 2.5 million devices using their technology were in the market. Cont'd...

Alfred Ng for CNet: Legrand sees a future where your smart home learns based on your habits and behaviors -- even knowing when to turn on the lights for your 3 a.m. bathroom run.

The French-based electrical equipment company hopes to make smart homes autonomous, where shades open and the coffee maker gets started before you wake up. Like iOS's automated traffic helper, that uses your frequent locations and tells you how long your commute will be, Legrand wants to use the same data, but apply it to your alarms. Cont'd...

Julian Horsey for GeekyGadgets: Anyone looking to add a little more advanced home automation to their living quarters might be interested in a new advanced piece of hardware called the Wirebutter, which has been specifically designed for Internet of things applications and home automation.

Watch the demonstration video below to learn more about the new system which has been designed by Anthony Salerno based in Melbourne Australia.

Wirebutter has this week been launched by a Kickstarter to raise the funds it requires to go into production. The project has pledges starting from as little as AUD $65 for earlybird backers. Article:

Kayla Devon for BuilderOnline: Another builder has stepped up to offer home automation features as standard assets in new homes, challenging other local builders to do the same.

Raleigh, N.C.-based Shenandoah Homes announced a partnership with a local Raleigh provider, Anuva Automation, which manufactures the TiO line of home automation products. Shenandoah Homes, which has control of over 1,000 lots in the area, intends to offer customers a standard package that includes lighting, thermostat and security control, with the additional options for more lighting, smart door locks and garage door control, and audio features.

“Home automation is an area of importance of what home buyers are looking for and would expect in any new home,” David Stallings, president and owner of Shenandoah Homes, said in a statement about the new offering. Cont'd...

Melanie Ehrenkranz for Tech.Mic: Last week, a distributed denial of service attack took down Twitter, Reddit, Spotify and oh so much more. The hackers remain at large, but the root of the hack is clear: tens of millions of insecure IoT devices attacked by a massive botnet.

"This could mean everything from camera systems, to power company self-reading meters, to smart lightbulbs," Radware vice president of security solutions Carl Herberger said in an email Monday.

The devices that were vulnerable to hackers during last week's attack were mainly DVRs and security cameras, but any device connected to the internet is a potential target: lightbulbs, webcams, toasters, coffeemakers, thermostats, televisions, shower heads, connected locks — and the list goes on. Cont'd...

Prashant Gopal for Bloomberg: In a darkened master bedroom, David Kaiserman stood in shirtsleeves next to a turned-down king bed. “Good morning, Siri,” he said to the iPad in his hand, and the lights went on while the blackout shades retracted.

“Your home is ready to rise and shine,” the virtual assistant replied. Inside this four-bedroom stucco house in Alameda, California, Kaiserman, president of the technology division at construction company Lennar Corp., was pitching a vision of a home controlled via iPhone or iPad.

Tap your phone, and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blasts. Tap again, and the bath runs at a blissful 101 degrees. Sweet, right? Of course, your dad might view it as a bit over the top. All told, $30,000 worth of gadgets and gizmos were on display here, many run with Apple’s free HomeKit app. Cont'd...

Kari Paul for MarketWatch: As the recent announcement that 500 million Yahoo email accounts were hacked shows, emails and passwords are never fully safe. On a daily basis, hackers use strategies like phishing scams to steal usernames and passwords, posing as a bank or other legitimate establishment to trick users. Consumers should be wary of any email asking for personal information and always check the sender address to be sure it’s based at the website the sender claims to be (like an @paypal.com email address versus a deceptively similar location like @paypal.co or @paypalhelp.com). No measure will guarantee users won’t be hacked (email addresses can even be spoofed, and there are ways to check for this by tracing IP addresses). But a number of actions can be taken to lower the risk of hacking and secure your home. Cont'd...

Eric Brown for Linux.com: Industrial, rather than home, applications will likely dominate the Internet of Things (IoT) market in the years to come. Yet, in the early going, the home automation market has had the greatest visibility. And it hasn’t always been pretty.

Despite steady growth, retail sales have yet to achieve inflated expectations. Too many companies promised and failed to deliver interoperability with a growing catalog of often buggy smart home products. The lack of essential applications, complex installation, and in many cases, high prices, have also conspired against the segment.

Yet the smart home segment appears to be rebounding with the help of maturing technology and IoT interoperability standards. There is particular interest in connecting voice-enabled AI assistants with the smart home in products such as Amazon’s Echo. Cont'd...

Stacey Higginbotham for MIT Technology Review: Insurers such USAA and American Family have lately begun offering to strike a high-tech bargain: wire your home with Internet-connected devices such as a new thermostat, and get a discount on your home insurance policy in return.

Offers like that could speed up the adoption of smart gadgets, revamp the insurance business, and transform how we manage our homes. In the future, your insurer might call a plumber before a pipe bursts, for example. But the data needed to help prevent leaks or burglaries will also introduce new risks, such as vulnerabilities to data loss or ransomware. Cont'd...

Mathew Ingram for Fortune: Google is famous for coming to the market late. The search-engine business was well established before it arrived, and yet the company managed to take the lead. It now dominates the category. But can it do the same thing in the smart home?

The web giant is expected to launch a standalone device called simply Google Home on Tuesday, a device that it hopes will become the centerpiece of the smart home, and provide some strong competition for the well-established Amazon Echo. But it will be an uphill battle. Cont'd...

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